1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording and reproducing device for recording and reproducing information on a recording medium such as an optical disc or a hard disk.
2. Description of the Related Art
An information recording and reproducing device is known, in which, in order for a user to be able to easily identify contents recorded on a recording medium, a list of titles of the contents is superimposed on a background image so as to make a title menu screen, which is then recorded on the recording medium along with the contents.
In the known information recording and reproducing device, for example as shown in FIG. 6A, frames 132 for containing titles are formed in advance or already on an image 131 to make a background image 130, which is MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)-encoded and stored in a memory 117, and is used to make a title menu screen. As shown in FIG. 6B, the background image 130 is read out from the memory 117 to make a title menu screen 150. Titles 141 and 142 read out from a recording medium such as an optical disc are superimposed on the background image 130 so as to make a title menu screen 150, which is then recorded on the recording medium. In this way, the title menu screen 150 having the titles 141 and 142 contained in the frames is stored in the recording medium, thereby making it possible to plainly display a list of titles of contents to a user. In this connection, devices for enabling a user to easily recognize a character string in a menu item are known, such as information processing devices that display a character string in a given frame with scrolling display (refer to e.g. Japanese Laid-open Patent Publications 2001-75702 and Hei 5-67082).
However, since the information recording and reproducing device to display such title menu screen 150 as shown in FIG. 6B uses the background image 130 with the frames, formed in advance or already thereon, for containing the titles 141 and 142, there may be cases where the number of frames for containing the titles 141 and 142 does not match the number of titles, which causes display of unnecessary frames 151 and 152 on the title menu screen 150. In such case, it is difficult for a user to recognize at a glance whether or not the frames 151 and 152 contain titles. Further, some contents recorded on a recording medium may include a content without a title (i.e. content with no title given thereto) or a content with a title using only space (blank character). However, in the case of the title menu screen 150 as shown in FIG. 6B, a user cannot determine whether the frames 151 and 152 indicate that there exist no contents themselves or there exist contents without titles, so that the user cannot recognize the existence of contents without titles. This problem cannot be solved even by applying thereto the technology disclosed in the above Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication 2001-75702 or Hei 5-67082.